Lord Hylton – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hylton on 2015-12-10.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to take steps to ensure that Turkey does not repatriate any genuine refugees, following the recent EU–Turkey financial agreement.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns

The UK cooperates closely with Turkey on migration and Turkey has consistently confirmed that their borders remain open to genuine refugees. We commend Turkey’s generosity in hosting over 2.2 million refugees from the crisis in Syria and Iraq. Enhanced cooperation between the EU and Turkey is critical to resolving the current migration crisis. At the EU-Turkey summit on 29 November, the EU agreed €3billion of additional support to Turkey to help ease its refugee burden and prevent further irregular migration to the EU. Turkey and the EU also agreed to activate the migration action plan. As part of this action plan, Turkey committed to accelerate procedures in order to readmit smoothly irregular migrants who are not in need of international protection, whilst ensuring that vulnerable people continue to be identified and taken care of.